New EU €2 Handling Fee: What 1st November 2026 Means for Your Orders

📌 Summary: From 1st November 2026 the EU adds a second charge to parcels coming in from outside the EU: a €2 handling fee on every different product in the parcel, on top of the €3 duty that started in July. From the same day, every product in a parcel also needs its own ID number on the customs paperwork. Here is what that means in plain English, what it costs, what it means at the Stickiply checkout, and what it might mean for your small business if you're shipping into the EU.

The headline change

In our July post we explained the €3 customs duty that the EU was adding per product type on every parcel entering the EU under the €150 threshold. That duty was always meant to be accompanied by a partner fee: that fee pays for the customs work itself. From 1st November 2026 a handling fee of €2 per item will apply to every consumer parcel sold into the EU from outside it (Commission Delegated Regulation adopted 21st September 2026, published in the Official Journal on 22nd October 2026, under Article 20(2) of Regulation (EU) 2026/2108).

Three things make the €2 different from the €3:

• No value limit. The €3 only applies to parcels under €150. The new €2 applies to every item, every parcel, no matter the value.
• Permanent. The €3 is temporary, until July 2028. The €2 has no end date.
• Non-refundable. If the goods come back, customs keep the €2.

So what is an 'item'? Every parcel coming into the EU has a customs form (declaration) listing what is inside. Each line on that form is an 'item'. Identical products, say 100 sheets of the same vinyl, go on one line and count as one item. Two different products, say vinyl and laminate, are two lines and therefore 'two items'. Under €150 you can group identical things like this. Over €150 the parcel needs the full-length customs form, where every product gets its own line and no grouping is allowed, so every product in the parcel pays its own €2.

What this looks like with real Stickiply orders

Since July the average EU order on our site has had about 1.6 items on the form. From November that average order costs about €8 in duty and fees where it was about €5.

Why the EU 🇪🇺 is doing this

The €3 duty added in July was about overseas sellers (namely Temu, Shein and others) paying no duty at all under €150. The €2 is 'supposedly' about something else: EU customs now handle billions of small parcels a year, and the €3 goes to the EU budget, not to the customs offices doing the work. The €2 is supposedly paying for the processing. Ireland's tax office, which has published the clearest guide so far, puts it simply: the fee is paid by the seller or the delivery company, who may pass it on to you.

What changes at the Stickiply checkout

Nothing! VAT and the €3 are already built into the price you see at our checkout (via our IOSS integration with EAS, IOSS being the EU's Import One Stop Shop VAT scheme), and you see these as line items at the checkout. The €2 is going to be worked into our prices for the time being, until Shopify can integrate it in the same way as a line item or we find another external solution. This means that by our calculation of an average EU order of 1.6 items, our prices from 30th October will be raised by 5% in the EU market to cover the new costs. This then means the courier asks for nothing when they hand over the parcel.

Consolidating orders saves even more now

The €2 is fixed per item, like the €3, and both are charged on every parcel. So the maths from July got stronger: the same products split across several parcels pay the charges several times. To combat this, we will increase the maximum sheets and custom items you can order as a single line item, so that customers are not charged multiple €2 fees for the same item over and over again. For example, Matte Vinyl sticker paper will go up to 500 sheet packs, from 100 sheets today.

Same products, same address, €20 saved at the border before postage is even counted. If you order from outside the EU regularly, from anyone, fewer and bigger orders are now the single biggest saving there is.

If you run an e-commerce business shipping to the EU

If you run an e-commerce business shipping to the EU, maybe you are also based in the UK, US, Canada, Australia or New Zealand or elsewhere, this part is for you.

Three things land on 1st November for sellers: the €2 itself, a new rule on product ID numbers, and a good reason to look at how your customs forms get filled in. The ID numbers are the one that stops parcels, so they come first.

Every product needs an ID number

From 1st November 2026, every line on an EU customs form will need a 'Product identifier', or PID for short. It is just a reference for one specific product, so customs can tell it is the same thing from one parcel to the next. Think of it as the customs version of your SKU. The EU lists four kinds: your own SKU, the manufacturer's code, a barcode like an EAN where one exists, and a flag saying no barcode exists. Your own SKU was always needed anyway!

In practice your carrier or your IOSS intermediary (the company that files your IOSS VAT returns for you) will build the PID from the SKU on your order if you don't already have an alternative. If a product has no SKU, they may make one up, and made-up ones might get questioned. Teleship (our main carrier for EU parcels) looked back over the last six months of our parcels and found 64 of 733 had carried a product with no SKU. You'll need to open your product list, filter for blank SKUs, and fill them in before Saturday. Keep each one unique and never change it once set.

How to price in the €2?

The fee is per item, per parcel, non-refundable, and it applies above €150 too. Shopify cannot show it as its own line at checkout at the moment and nothing has been said about this, so it has to live somewhere in what the customer already pays. There are four main ways to do that, and you can mix them:

• Add €2 to the price of each product for EU customers. Simple and exact, but it hurts on cheap items: €2 on a €4 sticker is a 50% rise, on a €40 bundle it is 5%.
• A percentage on your EU prices. Work out your average EU order value and average number of lines, then price the fee as a percentage. If a typical order is €50 with two lines, that is €4 in fees, or 8%. Shopify Markets lets you set a price adjustment like this for the EU in one place, so you do not touch each product. However on some orders you'll win or lose.
• Put it in your EU shipping rates. Add your average fees per order to the postage price. It is kinder to small items and slightly unfair to big orders, which might be a good trade off.
• Absorb it, on everything or just on high-cost items, and treat it as a cost of selling to the EU.

Whichever you pick, do not promise to refund it on returns, because customs will not refund it to you.

Check what your carrier does with the fee

The €2 is owed by whoever files the customs form: your carrier, the postal service or your IOSS intermediary. Each bills it differently, some when you book, some on the monthly invoice, some per line and some per parcel. Ask now, before the first November invoice lands, and check your IOSS intermediary is not billing it a second time.

Fewer lines, fewer fees

Every charge in this post is per line, and your carrier counts the lines exactly as you send them. One carrier told us this week that an order sent as 16 lines will be quoted €32 in handling fees over the €150 threshold, and the same order sent as six grouped lines, €12 under the threshold. They're not merging lines for you yet, so we built it into our own shipping rate app that calls their API. So as advice, under €150, group identical products (same product type, same description, same country it was made in) into one line before you book. Use one commodity code format for everything too. A commodity code (HS code) is the number customs use to say what a product is, and the same product on an 8-digit code and a 10-digit code is two lines and €5 twice. Over €150 none of this helps: the full customs form lists every product, and each one pays €2. However again, doing something similar to Stickiply if you can might help! If you sell 5 candles often, include a 5 candles option instead of having it appear as 5 lines.

Keep using IOSS

The case is stronger than in July. Without IOSS your customer now meets €5 per item plus the courier's own fee at the door. With it, VAT, the €3 and the €2 are sorted at checkout and the parcel just arrives. Refused parcels and refund requests cost far more than the registration.

What happens next

The €3 still ends on 1st July 2028, when the EU plans to switch to proper duty rates by product type and where it was made. The €2 and the product IDs are here to stay. We will write again when the rates are confirmed.

Questions?

If you have any questions about how this affects your order, email us at hello@stickiply.com. We write from our own reading of the rules and our own shipping data, and this is not legal advice.